Chrono Cross Translations

While translated information is added to several relevant places in the encyclopedia, it is centralized here for easy access and tracking. Contributing translators are listed above images.

Missing Piece

• 111 Serge, Lynx, Harle (Chris)

The Real Cast and concept tidbits

Serge

1. This Serge is equipped in a fairly wild style. Odds are this guy would probably be scolded by Leena or Kid for trying dirty things.
2. This rugged looking Serge emanates an aura from his whole body of a fearless drifter. Completely different from the normal Serge.
3. Formal wear Serge. Lightly studded with accessories.
4. There was also a test Serge that wore a green and purple vest.

Lynx

1. The appearance of a drifter, or a nobleman that was turned down. “Very similar to a Mongolian,” was the strange reason for the drawing.
2. A sudden change, this is a more full on cat style Lynx. This one actually seems a little more obscene.
3. This is a more human version, rather than a cat like creature. Maybe the factor that he didn’t really look villainous was why he was turned down.

Harle

1. Tough to request any other characters to have more of an impacting appearance. Here’s a more clownish style.

• 119 Unused Characters (Chris)

Mechanical Doll

By combining various parts you could probably control the style and settings of her attacks. It’s a shame she was turned down.

Baker’s Daughter

Looks like a character that attacks with the bread she holds. The top picture looks like a child, while the one on the left is more developed.

Grappler

Appears to be a Chinese monk that uses his hands. Thinking about the salesclerk on page 118, maybe they originally planned a Chinese style town.

Ninja

Like the RPG’s of yesterday, there was always a ninja. This also could have been a variation of Grobyc.

Journeyer to the West (?)

What? There was a plan in Chrono Cross to have a Journeyer to the West (Character from a Manga)? Maybe some sort of heroic female preist, or a character wearing all seeing goggles…or whatever Square’s interpretation was.

Ultimania

Developer Interviews

• Masato Kato (Chris)

“Serge and Kid were where I tried the hardest, moreover making a ‘boy meets girl’ kinda thing”

In the pace of Radical Dreamers

Interviewer – Many user’s (this magazine) have been hopefully waiting for a sequel to Chrono Trigger (CT), and finally you have made an appearance. Since you (Kato) were the scenario director for the previous games, you’ve thought a lot about the series. This time around, how are the story elements going to continue or take over from the previous games?

Kato – CT wasn’t just me (Square), but Yuji Hori and Akira Toriyama were also involved in creating it. If these members met again right now, I think a serious attempt to make a CT 2 is not at all a realistic possibility. When talking with the producer Tanaka about the possibility of making a new Chrono game, I was requested to do in the storyline vein of Radical Dreamers (RD).

I – Your talking about the text adventure game that came out on the Stellaview, right?

Kato – Yeah. Honestly, there were some story elements and unfinished business that I wanted to create in a sequel to CT itself. It seemed like there was another story in a parallel dimension. If we could do in that pace, I’d like to try making in the same flow and direction as the level of the Chrono series. Also, for RD, we only had 2-3 months to develop it, and I didn’t get to a point where I felt satisfied. I think I’d like to get that a little more completed too, since it’s always been in my heart.

I – The title “Chrono” is attached, but is the influence of RD also very strong?

Kato – This time I think we were really lucky. Many people played the Super Nintendo title CT, so first of all there was a hope to have a sequel or remake. Also, no one knew about RD, since it barely slipped by production. I like the story of RD, but we left it unfinished in an emergency rush, chased by the engaging gears of production. I wanted to somehow take it up again, since I thought about it daily. What’s more, I didn’t know that CT was being ported to the PS. (laughs)

I – Oh, you didn’t know? (laughs)

Kato – I learned about halfway through the completion of Chrono Cross (CC). Actually, I knew that CT was going to be ported. (laughs) I went to anime movie meetings for the porting publisher and we talked about connecting CT to CC with some hints through the ending movie. Like how we could link the pieces together well.

I – There was only a difference of two weeks in the release dates of the ported CT and CC. (In Japan, at least…)

Kato – It was to give a feeling of wanting to continue playing. CT was already released 5 years before on the Super Nintendo. There were easily some people who forgot the story, or people who weren’t even the age to play it. That’s why we planned from the beginning to not have it take over the exact story. The people who wouldn’t have played the first game would have no reason for playing a game they couldn’t understand. Taking this into consideration, we thought about the timing, having the ported CT come before CC. If we did that, CC could be played right after CT, and the story relationships would be somewhat strengthened. That way, the previous game could be incorporated better.

I – Thinking about the various connections between CT and CC, what’s enjoyable now is not necessarily understanding the Chrono world, but actually playing it. That in mind, there are no real ways to play RD. To the Chrono fans, are there any stories from the works that could be handed down?

Kato – Actually, about RD, there was some attempt before CC was put on the market. The Stellaview data was planned to be put on a ROM cartridge and connected to a premier at Akihabara (Electronics district in Tokyo, nerd central). The porting development team heard this and wanted to put all of RD into the CT Playstation port, but was told to leave it as it was. I also rejected it. It was made four years about, and when I read the script now, I’m easily embarrassed. While the development of the RD story is in CC, I think there’s no reason you need to understand RD to enjoy CC.

I – Where did you get the conception to use parallel worlds as a platform?

Kato – From the get-go, I was against using time travel exactly like in CT, but wanted to keep on the same level in the series. Eventually, we decided not to do the “If something happened in the past, could it change the future?” pattern. If we did that, we would only be rehashing and cranking up the volume of the last game. That wasn’t at all what we wanted to do.

I – It’s only natural that you wouldn’t want to do something like that.

Kato – Yeah. If we ended up doing that, the gameplay wouldn’t dramatically change at all, would it? So we thought a bit about it, and I really liked CT’s style, but since we did time travel then, this time would be parallel worlds. Doing it this way made perfect sense to me. (literal translation: straight into my head it popped and fit) So, we started thinking about what would be most interesting when using parallel worlds as a platform.

I – Like meeting Kid in the world that you died in.

Kato – From a cursory look, it looks like the normal world, but some things are different. Then, the main character realizes the biggest shock of all…he’s supposedly dead. So he’s living in one world and not in another, and the puzzle begins; “Why did I die?” From there, Lynx gets involved, there are hints that fate is controlling the world, there are the six dragons symbolizing nature, and so on. Then, from CT, there’s more about Lavos, when Lavos came, how it lifted primitive people up to create a magic kingdom, and other connections. Maybe even Lavos was the trigger than caused humans to evolve from monkeys. Elements like that incorporate into each other, one after another. We thought about how it would flow together smoothly to surprise the players in the best way.

I – What was the main theme you tried to write into this work?

Kato – I usually don’t care too much for themes. The most important thing is whether the game is enjoyable. For this time…well, I already talked about the time element, but in CT I couldn’t write much about what happened to Schala. What truly could have happened what left an unfinished story, and that’s why I chose to properly complete it. Since both games could be played, I chose to make a conclusion between the worlds of CT and CC.

I – So you wanted to connect the works with the relationships between Serge and Kid, and also Schala.

Kato – To pin it down, Serge and Kid were where I tried the hardest, moreover making a ‘boy meets girl’ kinda thing. A kid named Serge meets a girl named Kid and together they get wrapped up in an adventure. From the world he doesn’t know about secrets are slowly revealed, about Serge himself, Schala from the past, and how fate is tied in. This could just be an ending where boy meets girl and they do their story, but perhaps there’s another dimension, another story, a different meeting, and a completely different life story that you could have. I persistently tried my hardest to get the player to question things like this.

I – So for a good ending movie, you tried to use the crossing point of a young girl and her other side to imagine “a story in another dimension.”

Kato – Yeah, like that. I thought that was the perfect material to use to give meaning to a parallel world. In each independent parallel world there would be respective developing stories. If we did it that way, people at home could use the experience of Serge in the game’s worlds to think about the reality of their own world. Maybe somewhere in our world there’s a Kid, and surely someday we will find and meet. For a long time I’ve wanted realizations developed from games to not just stop with the game, and now I feel I’ve done it right. There’s a message that comes after the ending movie finished, and I hope that all players will understand these words that have come from my heart. That’s what I’d love to have happen.

From: Games